Organic Southern FreeThought

Everybody seems to have an unusual, and sort of creepy, obsession about people’s bathroom habits lately. So let’s clear up a few misunderstandings about how people “do their business” when they are away from the privacy and safety of their own homes.

Let me also warn you now that if you tend to be one of the people fighting to discriminate against people trying to go potty in peace, you may certainly be offended by this article… just wanted to go ahead and get that straight right now. And, honestly, I don’t care. Just so ya know. If you are not one of those people, then I believe you’ll understand exactly where my frustration comes from when I say that I find it senseless that we even have to have these conversations at all. But apparently we do, so here goes:

First of all, if the bathroom rhetoric was really about children’s safety, the proposed ordinances would ban sex offenders, not transgendered people. Or these proposals would state that children should be accompanied by their adult in public restrooms (which should happen anyway unless you are a complete failure as a parent), or that toilets should all have locking doors, or that open side-by-side urinals should be enclosed in privacy… there are many ways that this apparent problem could be solved if it was in fact about something other than legislating lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender harassment.

I keep hearing the same thing over and over from people who have failed to educate themselves fully on this issue: “I don’t want a pedophile in the restroom with my little girl.” There are so many things wrong with this short-sighted statement. For one, just so you understand this very clearly, the vast majority of pedophiles are heterosexual men. While you’re busy overreacting to having a trans-woman (whom you would never even recognize as trans because most likely she does ‘woman’ better than you) in the bathroom with your precious little girl, the real pedophile is already in the men’s room with your little boy.

And here’s something else you need to understand, these so called “bathroom bills” that have been put in place to cause panic and fuel the fires of bigotry, have nothing whatsoever to do with public safety. It may surprise you to know that under existing laws, it is a crime to falsely gain entry into any public restroom with the intent to harass or harm anyone. Yeah, that’s already a rule – for those of you who blindly listen to media garbage without actually checking your facts.

These proposed laws are simply a smoke screen to keep people from focusing on other more important issues at hand. They are also an elaborate temper tantrum – the direct result of backlash from disgruntled politicians and their extremist followers who are pissed that the Supreme Court granted equal rights to the gay community in regards to marriage and adoptions last summer. The opponents to this landmark ruling have stooped to using fear tactics to spread their hate. If you are buying into their rhetoric, then you have played right into their hands – and you are part of the problem.

This strange conservative obsession with genitalia isn’t new. In fact, we’ve fought civil rights battles in bathrooms before – black people had to fight for their right to use public facilities as did handicapped people. Hell, handicapped people literally had to fight for their right to be SEEN in public. Extremist conservatives didn’t win then, and they won’t win now. Transgendered people have a basic fucking right to use the toilet they feel is safe, clean and appropriate for them – just like black people do and handicapped people – and just like you do.

“What’s behind all this nonsense? I am old enough to remember a similar fear back in the 1950s. At that time, southern politicians warned that racial desegregation would put white women at risk. If white women, idealized as symbols of purity (even when reality suggested the contrary), came into contact with black men, they warned, rape would surely follow. Behind much of the resistance to desegregation was sexual panic.

Transgendered people are not your enemies. They are not playing dress-up, they are not men wearing skirts or women in a baseball cap. These people were simply born different than you. Most homosexual people that I know have tried desperately to be what the world expects them to be, but way down at their basic cellular and hormonal level, their bodies have betrayed what their minds know to be the truth – and you cannot fight biology and expect to win. We simply are who we are, biologically speaking.

Many homosexual and transgendered people have tried to live in denial, perpetrating a lie in order to stay safe from ridicule or harm. Many, too many, have opted to end their lives instead of embracing who they truly are in a society that is quick to condemn anything out of the norm. I have lost people that I love for this exact reason – and it’s unacceptable.

The entirety of the LGBT community has been victimized by bullies and been the target of violence for as long humans have lived in “civilized” societies. Homosexual and transgendered people have literally died at the hands of hateful bigots over something as simple as trying to relieve themselves of a full bladder.

Transgendered people are sensitive to the hostility that a hateful public have toward them. They cannot help how they were born, just as an autistic or Down ’s syndrome child cannot help how they were born – just as we cannot help it if we have blue eyes or brown eyes or white skin or brown skin. Homosexual and transgendered people are certainly not pedophiles lurking in bathrooms waiting to deflower your precious little children. If anything, the LGBT community, who themselves are some of the most vulnerable members of our society, is more empathetic and protective of the innocent than most others.

And I’m probably really gonna blow your minds with this one, but I’m gonna say it anyway… homosexuality is a natural occurrence – throughout the entirety of the animal kingdom up to and including Homo sapiens. Homosexuality exists in nearly every single species on the planet. Plain and simple truth. Like it or not.

If you are a follower of God’s Holy Scripture, and trying to use the “Good Book” to justify your fear and hatred, then you should maybe give it another read. It seems to me that you should know the rules by now – that we are all made in God’s image (the Bible doesn’t say “just white conservative straight people” either), we are not to question what the good Lord has created, we are only to love one another and steward this beautiful planet that was given to us. I mean, Jesus loves the little children, right? Red and yellow, black and white, gay or straight or hermaphrodite, they are precious in his sight… or something like that anyway.

In fact, if you really want something legitimate to feel uneasy about, we can drop the Bible all together and take a look at some science. It is also a verifiable truth that due to our myriad of chemical pollutants that we oblivious humans have allowed into our food, our air and our waterways, we are literally bathing in, and eating, our fair share of endocrine disrupting compounds every single day – or to call these dirty nasty things by a simpler term, “hormone mimics”. And they most likely are to blame for the rise in gender dysphoria and ambiguous genitalia. If you don’t know what those terms mean, by all means, look them up.

These endocrine disruptors are carcinogenic. They also have a variety of other adverse impacts to our health, including our reproductive systems. One of the foremost side effects of our intense love affair with plastics is the feminization of males and the masculinity of females. Yes, that means what you think it means – little boys being born with intense feminine traits, and little girls born with intense masculine traits. We’ve been watching it happen for many years, with growing rapidity, in amphibians. These little creatures are great bio-indicators of this critical problem since they are so small and they literally breathe through their skin.

Hormone disruption happens a little slower in mammals, specifically humans – unless you’re in the womb of a contaminated woman, in which case, POOF!, those little brand new hormones can be affected and literally alter the child’s brain and reproductive development. Although homosexuality is a very natural thing, it is in fact on the rise due to the poisons we have immersed ourselves in since we started going plastic and synthetic chemical-crazy. And no, I’m not making this up. If you don’t trust me, you can trust the researchers and experts at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences – and thousands of other reputable sources who have proved this tragic man-made phenomena is on the rise.

So, if you truly want something to whine and bitch and complain about, get your head out of the toilet and educate yourself. Instead of fighting against the rights of innocent human beings, perhaps you could put that energy toward fighting the poisons that can contribute to others being born into a world they have to struggle to fit into. Try spending some effort researching and learning about things that actually are harmful to our planet and to your children. Take that poisoned McBurger out of your kid’s mouth, stop slathering 10 lbs of carcinogenic makeup on your face, and turn off the propaganda machine that is your television and pay attention to what’s really happening in this world.

A transgendered woman is no threat to you or your child in a public restroom, but the contaminated water coming out of the faucet is a definitive threat to you, your children, and every single other living thing on this planet.

Using the same restroom as a person who has undergone a medical transformation to correct a handicap cannot harm your child, but endocrine disruptors and other chemical cocktails you are feeding your child can, will and are harming them every single day. If your concern really is for the children, then stop getting riled up about things you cannot change, and try changing the things you can.

And one more thing, no one deserves to be punished for simply Being. If you are a small-minded, ill-informed, hateful, selfish bigot, your argument that your rights are being violated is unfounded and utterly ridiculous. If you are that person, I want to make it perfectly clear that YOU are the one violating other people’s rights – you look like a fool arguing against someone’s right to go potty in peace. Really, you do.

If you are fanatically troubled by what kind of gender parts are in someone’s pants, then it is you who may be the sick, deranged, sex-obsessed person you claim to be worried about. Perhaps you should ask yourself why you care so much if I have a pretty little vagina or two great big fat penises dangling between my legs – because if it bothers you that much, you are the one with an unhealthy obsession.

What I have under my flowery flowy hippy skirt is none of your damn business, and when and where and how I choose to privately find a place to empty my bladder should most definitely be none of your fucking concern.

So there. That’s what I’ve been wanting to say concerning public potties, what’s in our britches and a little science too.

Tauna Pierce

Tauna’s work has an organic feel with a general focus on the outdoors, wildlife conservation, sustainable living, gardening and homesteading. In addition to writing, Tauna is an Interpretive Naturalist with a background in veterinary medicine. She is the co-founder of Nature's Echo, an environmental education organization that provides live bird of prey programs throughout the Southeast.

Tauna’s work has an organic feel with a general focus on the outdoors, wildlife conservation, sustainable living, gardening and homesteading. In addition to writing, Tauna is an Interpretive Naturalist with a background in veterinary medicine. She is the co-founder of Nature's Echo, an environmental education organization that provides live bird of prey programs throughout the Southeast.